Quick Links

Club PA 2.0 has arrived! If you'd like to access some extra PA content and help support the forums, check it out at patreon.com/ClubPA

The image size limit has been raised to 1mb! Anything larger than that should be linked to. This is a HARD limit, please do not abuse it.

Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

[Magic: the Gathering] Uguu~~ The Spiwit Dwagon

FeralＭＥＭＥＴＩＣＨＡＲＩＺＡＲＤalong with you if I get drunk well I know I'm gonna be gonna be the man whoRegistered Userregular

Origins of the Game (credit: @Shadowen)Magic: the Gathering was invented in 1980 by Richard Garriott for the Apple II while he was going to University of Texas...

...no, wait, that was Ultima.

Magic: the Gathering is a collectible card game. Buy boosters, get cards. Put cards in deck. Lose. Realize you need better cards. Go on tcgplayer.com and spend $1000 on singles. Win. You are now the master of nerd games. Pull up your pants.General Gameplay Concepts

If you want to get a closer look at the rules, check out this link and click on “New to Magic”. There is also a game called Duels of the Planeswalkers (there's a game for every year from 2011 through 2015), and you can get the demo for any of the three versions for free on X-Box Live, Playstation Network, or Steam. They have tutorials built in! Isn’t that thoughtful?

...you’re having trouble finding players? Fair enough. You know the store where you got those cards? Ask them if they have any events. Typically they will have a thing called Friday Night Magic. There’s meet and greets, mini-tourneys, casual play, trades, group homosexual sex (especially amongst the judge community), the works. Also, don’t worry about the lore. Do you need to care about the story in Risk? No, you just conquer all the other motherfuckers. If you want, you can look into it, but it doesn't need to distract you from killing people with Storm Crow.

The Colors
There are five colors of magic and tens of thousands of individual cards between them (not to mention colorless cards!), but they generally adhere to the following style. (Some cards step out of these for various reasons, but this is a good rule of thumb.)

Magicthegathering.com - This is the Magic mothership! You can find all sorts of goodies here, including article series that cover the many facets of magic from both a player and designer perspective. I'm pretty partial to Making Magic, Building on a Budget, and Limited Information!Gatherer - This is Wizards' official card database. You search for cards using some different parameters (color, cost, artist, to name a few). Good for building theme decks or finding a particular wording.The Magic Rules page - This is where you can find the comprehensive rules alongside a list of every keyword in magic.MagicCards.Info - a Gatherer-esque site which provides quick search, comparison of different card arts for individual cards, and card pricing information.Star City Games - This is probably the next biggest Magic site next to the mothership; it has its own database alongside its own daily columns. As an added bonus, Star City is a very reputable Magic retailer, and is a good place to look if you want a price reference for certain cards.ChannelFireball - The best free resource for Magic: the Gathering strategy articles, and a reputable card dealer in its own right.MTGSalvation - A good website dedicated to Magic, and the best source for compiled information about "spoiled" cards from upcoming (unreleased) Magic sets.Tappedout.net - A website used to post decks to share with others, or to find ideas for your own decks.Essentialmagic.com - This is another site that allows you to construct decks and post them online for critique. It also has a comprehensive list of formats and what sets are legal in each of them.The Magic Academy - This is an article series that was written as a tool for new players to get themselves familiar with the game. It explains the philosophies behind certain cards, when to play them, when to attack, how to block correctly, and other helpful topics.Five Rules for Avoiding Manascrew - One Weird Trick To Devise A Solid Mana Base For Any DeckDeckbuilding 101: Five Tips for Better Deckbuilding - A must-read for any Magic player. It doesn't really discuss specific strategy, but spells out certain fundamentals that every Magic player should absorb right into his bone marrow.Not Storm Crow. Go home, Gatherer, you are drunk.

Release of New Sets
New sets come out roughly every three months, with a "core set" being released every summer, and a "block" of three thematically- (and often mechanically-) linked sets being released at three-month intervals throughout the year. This gives Wizards no less than four, but really more like eleventy-seven, opportunities to squeeze your wallet dry annually.

Since Magic 2010, core sets have been comprised of roughly 50% new cards and 50% reprints. They serve to be simpler sets mechanically, which lowers the barrier-to-entry for new players, as well as helping to sculpt the Standard environment by defining a set of reprinted cards which are available to the format. Recent core sets have kind of sucked so the last core set will be this summer.

The advanced expansions that comprise a "block" are comprised of a much higher ratio of new cards to reprints (90-10 or 95-5, excluding basic lands), and tend to introduce more complex cards and interactions. The first set of a block is typically a "large" expansion (~250 cards), and the second and third sets are "small" expansions (~160 cards). The most recent complete block is comprised of three sets: Theros, Born of the Gods, Journey into Nyx. The current block consists of Khans of Tarkir and two more upcoming sets in 2015.

Duel Decks, Premium Decks, Commander products, and "From The Vault" anthologies are released periodically, and provide Wizards a way to make more money by releasing cards that are in demand for other formats, without making those cards legal in Standard by shoehorning them into a new set. We eagerly await the arrival of From the Vault: Storm Crow.Magic: The Gathering Online

A Guide for the New and Returning Player (totally mostly stolen)
As it goes with most things, players enter and exit the game with some regularity, but most frequently when the client crashes on them. Similarly, the game changes with the introduction of every new set and the costs to play are always in flux due to the various economic conditions and overall popularity of the game. So how you gonna stay on top of a thing?

Once you've slogged through that, you can start in two places on MTGO (or both): Limited, or Constructed.

Limited (Booster Draft / Sealed) - These formats are played using unopened product, and the prize payout for Limited events *is* unopened product, so the cost-per-event will vary wildly based on your performance. It can also be dangerously expensive for the beginner or bad player, so be cautious about entering into the game and heading straight to the draft queues. Expenditures of $11-$14 will quickly multiply and you will be sucking dick behind the Olive Garden to make rent.

Standard - The most popular "Constructed" format, comprised of the two most recent "blocks" + the most recent core set (though there is a brief interval where multiple core sets are legal). As with most Constructed formats, Standard has a high cost of entry that is partially exacerbated by the fact that the format rotates yearly and players have to "re-up". However, once you have a deck built, its shell will generally last you 6-12 months, and your cards will tend to retain at least a portion of their value until they rotate out of the format. Standard events also have a much cheaper entry fee, since you don't have to cover the cost of unopened product, and you can't play Storm Crow in them.

Beyond Limited and Standard, you'll find Block Constructed, Modern, Legacy, Pauper, and Classic. Besides Pauper, which is exclusively commons (albeit some relatively expensive commons), the other formats all have similar (or greater) costs to Standard, but most of them will allow Storm Crow in some capacity.

FAQ
Q: Where can I procure this game?
A: Right here, at the official Wizards site.

Q: This is ugly as hell?
A: The new version of the MTGO client is in Beta testing. Also, a lot of people fail to appreciate how hard it is to get a full M:TG battlefield's worth of cards and information onto a single screen without having it look cluttered. It used to be even uglier. God knows why they didn't just use the visuals from the Duels of the Planeswalkers Xbox/Steam/iOS/PSN/Atari Lynx game, but god knows why they printed Razor Boomerang when they could have just reprinted Storm Crow instead.

Q: It runs like shit.
A: That's not a question.

Q: What is there to do in the game?
A: Almost everything you can do in Paper Magic, and a couple other things besides. Currently, you'll have access to about 90% of every card ever printed -- almost everything worthwhile that's Pre-Mirage has been compiled into four Master's Edition sets, while everything from Mirage on is available (though only Standard-legal sets are purchasable from the official store). All the major formats are played online, with a constant stream of Draft, Sealed, Block Constructed, Standard, and Modern tournaments. The occasional Legacy and 100-Card Singleton tournament will also fire, but don't hold your breath! The multiplayer room is home to 2- and 3-Headed Giant, Emperor, Commander/EDH, FFA, and other niche game types.

Q: How much is this going to cost me?
A: A new account costs 10 dollars (if you like the game, it's going to end up costing you a lot more). Every new account comes with a set of gold-bordered cards taken from the Duels of the Planeswalkers game, as well as a mish-mash of cards from the most recent core set and a booster from that same set. It's suggested that you don't "open" the Planeswalker pack, as the cards can't be used outside of a single specific format, don't contain Storm Crow, and they will clutter your collection.

Q: How do you get unopened boosters for less than $4 each? How do you get boosters that are no longer sold by Wizards?
A: People and bots sell them! Generally, since the payout for Constructed and Limited tournaments is in booster packs of a current set, people are willing to sell those for less than face value in order to turn them into a more universal MTGO currency ("Event Tickets," which correspond roughly to dollars). You can frequently find packs of recently released sets for around 3.5 "tickets" apiece.

Q: Where are good places to buy singles on MTGO?
A: @ChaosHat recommends CardHoarder and MTGO Traders. He claims they are "consistently cheap" and "pretty nice".

Q: Where can I sell my singles back to feed my drafting addiction?
A: I'd recommend any of the CardBuyingBot bots, or the Supernovabot bots. Their prices are generally pretty fair.

Q: How could anyone pay that much for fake cards?
A: Because the game is fun? Also, if you collect every card in a set, you can redeem them for a pull set of paper cards (check the "set redemption" details on the MTGO website to see which sets are currently eligible for redemption). And really why would you pay that much for painted cardboard in the so-called "real world" if you were really concerned about intrinsic value? And what is the real world anyway but just an illusion created by the Demiurge to trap men's souls upon a physical plane of endless yearning?

Q: How do I join the PA clan?
A: Add @Metaghost to your buddies list once you sign up. Then, if you see him online, PM him and ask for a clan invite. He claims to usually be on evenings, EST/EDT.

Q: How come I can't play spells at the appropriate times? Doesn't "instant" mean I can play it whenever I want?
A: Check your stops. Go into your Gameplay Settings and you'll see a grid of boxes structured according the various timing steps. If the game isn't letting you cast a spell when you want/should be able to, check the appropriate box. Beware of too many stops though, as it can slow your play to a crawl and result in undeserved losses. As a related aside, to respond to your own spell-casting, primarily for the use of a card like Twincast, you must hold the CTRL key as you cast the initial spell.

Q: My opponent in this tournament hasn't done anything for like 3 minutes. What gives?
A: In what is one of the most annoying and persistent glitches of all time, it's possible that it's YOU who haven't done anything for 3 minutes. Sometimes priority doesn't get passed properly and the client bugs out. If you think this might be the case, close MTGO, re-open it and log back in.

Q: When I'm online, how do I link cards in the chat windows like a pro?
A: Just put the card name in curly brackets. Like this: {Storm Crow}
Good luck! There's a whole new code of conduct, so don't be a dick.

Posts

May want to mention a few free card bots: MTGOTradersFreeBot (64 commons per month), Academy_QuizBot (answer a question once a week for 4 [usually better] commons), ClanTeamFree (4 common or 1 uncommon card daily) to help new/not new people out. Those seem to be always around.

Xeddicus on January 2015

"For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men. Not women. Not beasts...this you can trust."

Just a note: I haven't been on MTGO in months, due to less time to Magic, especially not using V4. I'll probably sign on during Fate Reforged prerelease, but who knows. Not like the PA clan was especially functional, considering how abysmal the interface is.

Damniiiit! So close! I just needed to draw a Kaervek's Torch to finally pull off a win with my ghetto pauper wall deck (Freed from the Real, Axebane Guardian, Torch) but of course not! I'd have had another turn, but for some reason I couldn't activate my Wall of Tanglecord to block a flier, must have hit F6 or something...grumble, I should have checked the next card, but it was the Torch. But probably better I didn't then, too!

Edit hours later: Bitching works! Finally pulled it off 2 games in a row against a white/equipment deck, woot. Guy helpfully conceded second game, takes too long to build 20 mana even with 4 defenders out, had 2 out 2nd game then. But after like 20 loses- success! Time to retire the deck for a bit probably!

Xeddicus on January 2015

"For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men. Not women. Not beasts...this you can trust."

Does anyone have any clue what the draft this weekend is going to be like? Are we going to have to pick a clan again or are we just getting packs? What cards are supposedly going to be the promo'ed ones?

The prerelease is sealed format. You pick a clan like during the Khans prerelease, and the kit has a seeded pack for that clan/Ugin stuff, one Khans pack, and four Fate Reforged packs. As far as I know they're doing the same thing with promo rares as with Khans; you have the chance to open one of a number of rares associated with your chosen clan. It will be foil and date stamped.

Does anyone have any clue what the draft this weekend is going to be like? Are we going to have to pick a clan again or are we just getting packs? What cards are supposedly going to be the promo'ed ones?

There will be no drafts this weekend. Nitpicking; you meant Sealed I'm sure but just wanted to emphasize that WotC has a strict "no prerelease drafts" policy.

And yes, it's clan packs again. And if Khans is any indication, just about any non-mythic rare is fair game to be promo'd. Certainly the two cycles of legends (Khans and Dragons) are up for grabs, as well as presumably the Sieges and the Intro Pack rares so that's at least four per choice. I believe there actually just barely enough rares to have eight options per box, although that means the rare artifact (Scroll of the Masters, almost certainly would be Jeskai) and rare land (Crucible of the Spirit Dragon) are included.

EDIT: Nope, I'm wrong. Only 34 rares. So... six options each with 4 on the bench?

EDIT 2: Forgot there's usually one mythic thrown in the mix as well. Would make sense for the off-color hybrid guys to be them. Seven each?

Other (6)
Supplant Form (U) — flavor text implies Temur, but could be Sultai
Crucible of the Spirit Dragon (L) — no real home
Scroll of the Ancients (A) — strong Jeskai mechanic synergy
Mob Rule (R) — feels Mardu but not needed
Wildcall (G) — could be Sultai
Crux of Fate (B) — could be Sultai

Done this way it's interesting to note that I never have an "enemy" color rare in a given triad (also matches up with respective dragon's colors). Given that I'd slot Crux of Fate and Supplant Form into Sultai and leave Mob Rule and Wildcall hanging.

EDIT: Missed Soulflayer somehow. I thought 34 seemed odd. Cut Crux of Fate, as that is more of an iconic card that shouldn't be tied to a clan? Or slot everything else and give eight per? Abzan would probably have to get the land in this scenario, and everything else lines up.

Reposting from SE++, my tournament report from our PTQ this past weekend:
Played my area's last old school ptq this Saturday, which was a standard event. 114 players, 7 rounds. I played Adrian Sullivan's Dimir control list he posted in his article for select side on starcity this past Friday.

Report:

Round 1 - loss (0-1)

VS Abzan Midrange (caryatid/courser/rhino)

Opponent only plays 1 threat at a time, draws more cards than I do via abzan charm and read the bones. Outlasts my removal, kills/thoughtseizes all my ashioks, finishes me off with Elspeth tokens.

Round 2 - draw (0-1-1)

VS Sultai Hexproof midrange

Game 1 I lose to thoughtseizes and hexproofy threats (sagu mauler, reaper of the wilds) when I didn't have countermagic or perilous vault in time.

Game 2 I win when I am able to flip reaper of the wilds with Ashiok and have temple of mystery, temple of maladay, and opulent palace in play.

Game 3 Goes to turns, on my turn 5 opponent is on 13, 0 cards in hand. I have 1 prognostic sphinx and his reaper (again) with active Ashiok. Opponent chooses not to concede. Oh well.

Round 3 - Win (1-1-1)

VS 4 Color midrange

I win game 1 by killing their 4-mana threat, vaulting their caryatid and other supports, then stealing a rhino with Ashiok. Also, stealing a courser with a deck that has 27 lands is real nice.

Game 2 my opponent keeps 2 land + caryatid, but misses their turn 3 land drop. I hit Ashiok and promptly exile 3 lands from the top of their deck. They don't draw their 3rd land until I have multiple counters and 6 mana in hand. Ashiok exiles their hand, and the game is over.

Round 4 - Win (2-1-1)

VS Sultai Whip

Bile blight and drown in sorrow main deck do great work to keep Sidisi and hornets under control. Ashiok crushes their hopes and dreams. Games 1 & 2 are no contest.

Round 5 - Win (3-1-1)

VS Abzan aggro

Much closer games. I take game 1 with a quick Ashiok on the play, backed up with bile blight and hero's downfall.

I lose game 2 to the god-curve (fleeceman -> Anafenza -> Rhino) and having no vault to clear the board.

Game 3 they keep a speculative 2 land + thoughseize + double lion + rhino on the play and mulligan, but don't hit more lands after I despise one lion and bile blight the other. Ashiok cleans up.

Round 6 - Win (4-1-1)

VS Jeskai Tempo/Burn

Game 1 I keep the board clear of threats, and counter burn to the face. Ashiok goes the distance and empties their library.

Game 2 Is more of the same, only I can keep prognostic sphinx in play to hold back mantis riders to save my removal spells for just rabblemasters, seeker of the way, and elspeth. All the burn gets countered, and eventually I land Pearl Lake Ancient to close the game out (and bounce back radiant fountains to keep my life total high enough to stay safe from a flurry of burn).

Round 6 - Win (5-1-1)

VS 75 card mirror

Game 1 Is a battle of dueling Ashioks. His ultimates first, but I landed a perilous vault the turn before and play a scry land to see a dig through time on top. I ultimate the turn after he does, then pop vault to clear his ashiok. I dig at his EOT after he plays a land, getting another ashiok and a dissolve. Game over.

Game 2 is nice back and forth, but the turn I resolve a vault he goes to resolve a Liliana and uses the diabolic tutor (I assume he put ancient on top). I pop vault on my main, then ashiok+. He concedes, acknowledging that he sequenced incorrectly.

I miss top 8 on breakers (the gap was HUGE...starting x-1-1 was terrible for that), but 10th was x-2 so that's a bit of consolation. Car pool mate went 6-1 with gruul monsters, but got knocked out in the semis.

Overall I loved this build of the deck. I literally picked it up and played with no practice, so that should tell you something about how good it is.

Probably Temur, because I have a Riku commander deck and I want fun ability creatures (It's mostly creatures with comes into play effects. Aethersnipe is my absolute favorite - 5 mana to bounce something, make a 4/4 clone, and the card returns to my hand. Evoke is kind of silly with Riku)

I can't decide between Abzan, Mardu, or Temur. I went Temur last time and it worked out fairly well for my buddy and I in Two-headed Giant. Leaning more towards Abzan, just for the survivability and all the cards for Temur I like, aside from the phoenix, are mostly green

PSN: JesterKing13 Blizz Battletag: tehjester#1448

0

FeralＭＥＭＥＴＩＣＨＡＲＩＺＡＲＤalong with you if I get drunk well I know I'm gonna be gonna be the man whoRegistered Userregular

Oh man, what a year to quit magic. My last time playing magic was the Khan's prerelease (sealed) and I didn't draft it once. Well, partly because my LGS stopped running drafts during the week (I work weekends) and MTGO became an abomination not worth the trouble of learning how to operate.